Heart of Ice (13 page)

Had she frozen to death waiting for him?

Something tore deep in his chest, and it hurt so bad that for a moment he couldn’t even pull in enough air to breathe.

He couldn’t even move, because he knew now he wasn’t going to do anything. Any thought he had of helping
the police was gone. All he wanted to do now was survive.

He put the photograph back in the shoe box and stuck the box in the far corner of the closet.

*  *  *

Danny Dancer picked up the
Mackinac Island Town Crier
. For the tenth or eleventh time today he read the story about Julie Anne Chapman.

It told him that her bones had been found in the lodge, that she was from Bloomfield Hills and had a brother who was running for the Senate. It told him that the police weren’t sure yet that it was her. But he knew it was her.

He carefully smoothed the newspaper out on the table and concentrated on the photograph. It looked like one of those school pictures, but it was in plain old black-and-white. Not nearly as pretty as the picture of her he had stored in his head.

Skin glowing gold from the bonfire. Hair black and glossy as a horse’s mane. Eyes like the night sky pricked with stars, filled with love for the boy who worked at the stables.

Dancer couldn’t remember the boy’s name, and he didn’t care. He couldn’t remember the names of the fudgies or the rich West Bluff kids or even the names of the local kids who worked and played on the island.

But he remembered what they looked like. He remembered how they spent their days, what they did in the dark, because he watched them summer after summer.

They let him hang around but never too close. He never got invited up to Fort Holmes, where they went to smoke pot. Never got to share a bottle of Boone’s Farm
around a campfire. Never had a chance with a girl on an Indian blanket.

When he was young things like that hurt, and one day, many winters after Aunt Bitty was gone and he was all alone, he simply gave up watching them. He grew too old, grew too into himself, and stopped talking to anyone except the postal lady, the waitress at Millie’s, or the grocer at Doud’s.

It was just him and his skulls.

Until that day he found her, and suddenly the loneliness was gone.

When was that? He didn’t know. The newspaper said she was here in 1969 and the date on the newspaper said it was now 1990, but a sense of time was something he couldn’t grasp.

His life passed in seasons. Forests on fire with color. Gray skies and ice-chunked water. Melting drizzles and finally the bloom of the purple lilacs and dahlias as big as white dinner plates.

Dancer rose from the table and went to the shelves. He picked up the skull from the top.

“Hello, Julie,” he said softly.

He slowly ran his fingers over the smooth curve of bone. His eyes were burning, and it felt almost like all those times when the beetles were doing their work and he got too close to the skulls. But this burning was different. It was the burn of panic.

The newspaper said police had found her in the basement of the lodge. It hadn’t said anything about her skull being missing, but he knew the police would need it to figure out for sure that it was her.

They would want it back. They would come looking for it.

Had he been careful enough getting in and out of the lodge? Had the police found the hole that for so many summers had been his secret way in? Had he left fingerprints?

He had read somewhere that human beings lose eight pounds of skin cells per year. Could they sweep the floors and find him that way?

Aunt Bitty’s voice was suddenly in his head.
Stop being stupid. God gave you a brain, use it.

She was right. He was being stupid. No one could find him through his skin cells.

But he couldn’t be sure the postal lady didn’t know that his packages contained skulls. Couldn’t be sure no one had ever seen him crawling into the lodge. Couldn’t be sure someone couldn’t smell the brains.

He went to the window, held back the curtain, and peered out. The wind was calm and the leaves that sometimes danced across the yard were asleep. He saw a black squirrel on a low-hanging limb. But he saw no humans.

But they would come.

He let the curtain fall and went to the kitchen. He opened the cupboard below the sink and pulled out a large shoe box. He took out the hammer and crowbar and carried them to the far corner of the cabin. Dropping to his knees, he carefully pried the nails from two planks and lifted them from the floor.

It hadn’t been easy carving a hole in the concrete foundation, but he had managed. There was just enough room for him to slip in his fingers and lift the box out. He took it
to the table and removed the items—a thick wad of money bound with a rubber band, the gold brooch that Aunt Bitty had always worn to church, her miniature Bible, and a silver ring with two keys on it.

He picked up the skull and started to put it in the empty box but hesitated. His eyes scanned the room, finally finding what he needed. He went to the corner, stood on his bed, and carefully took the fox pelt off the wall, bringing it back to the table.

He wrapped the pelt around the skull. After putting the wad of money, brooch, keys, and Bible back in the box, he gently set the wrapped skull inside. When the box was back in the hole, he replaced the boards, making sure every nail went back into its original hole so the police wouldn’t notice they had ever been removed.

But hiding her was not enough.

He took the hammer and some nails outside to the shed. Inside he stopped to look around, at the old Tondix lawn mower, the broken rake, coils of discarded rope, and a heap of corroded beaver traps.

Aunt Bitty would be sad to see how he had let the place go, but she hadn’t left him much money to keep it up. Hadn’t left him anything but this three-room cabin that he was born in and her wisdom:
Don’t act stupid. Don’t eat rare meat. Don’t kill daddy longlegs because it makes it rain
.

With a sigh he whispered a promise to Aunt Bitty to get the place in shape and went back to his work.

He dragged the shutters from the shed and started boarding up the cabin windows. He was sweating hard by the time he went back inside and put the tools under the sink.

It was past three when he put the rabbit into the boiling mixture of water, potatoes, carrots, mushrooms, and Night Train Express wine.

While his dinner was cooking he stripped and washed himself at the sink. Dressed in clean overalls, a flannel shirt, and a double pair of red-heeled socks, he sorted through the mail. There was a new skull order, but he set it aside.

Business had to wait, he decided. The next few days, maybe even the next few years, would be devoted to protecting Julie Anne Chapman.

Danny Dancer got his rifle from the closet and positioned a chair to face the front door. He sat down, covered his legs with one of Aunt Bitty’s afghans, and laid the rifle across his knees. With the smell of stewing rabbit in his nose he closed his eyes and waited for the sound of footsteps in the leaves.

S
he wasn’t afraid of many things. Bugs hadn’t bothered her when she was a kid and busting crackheads hadn’t bothered her when she was a cop in Miami. But being in a boat on open water—that had always scared the hell out of her.

When Louis called and asked her to come to the island, Joe didn’t tell him she was afraid to get on a ferry.

But she did tell that she wasn’t afraid to see Norm Rafsky.

Not that she hadn’t been shocked when Louis told her Rafsky was on the island. It took half a bottle of wine to sort out her memories of Rafsky and the case they had worked together. She had no romantic feelings for him. But she couldn’t deny she still cared about what had happened to him in the last fifteen years.

Fifteen years. . . . Did he still hate her?

The grinding engine noise stopped. She stood up, shook out her clenched hands, and picked up her bag. There was no one on the docks. Then she saw Louis at the far end, standing by the gift shop to stay out of the cold wind.

For a moment she couldn’t move. Because she also hadn’t told him the other thing—that after nineteen months of a long-distance relationship capped by an argument
last Christmas, she was afraid it might be too late to fix things.

He spotted her and waved.

She started toward him. God, he was holding flowers. Her heart was suddenly hammering, and she had the stupid thought that she should have paid Donnie extra to put a few streaks in her hair. Or bought new underwear or painted her toenails.

Louis put his arms around her. She buried her face in his shoulder and closed her eyes. Finally she pulled back.

“I made it,” she said.

“I was getting worried. You said you were coming in on the three o’clock ferry,” he said.

“I know. I missed it.” Because she had been too chickenshit to get on.

Louis took her face in his hands and kissed her. His hands were like ice. His lips were warm. She realized he was wearing only jeans and a hooded sweatshirt emblazoned with
MACKINAC ISLAND
.

“You waited out here in the cold for the last hour?” she asked.

“I found something to do.” He held out the flowers. “I wanted to get you roses, but there’s no florist on the island. There are, however, a lot of really nice gardens.”

She laughed and took the flowers. “I’m surprised you didn’t get arrested.”

“I’ve got juice here,” he said, smiling. He picked up her bag. “Just wait until you see the hotel.”

As they started down Main Street, a strange silence took hold.

“Can I ask you something?” she said.

“This sounds serious,” Louis said.

“Rafsky. How is he?”

Louis hesitated. “I don’t know the guy, Joe.”

“You know what I told you about him.”

Louis let a few moments pass before he spoke. “He seems bitter.”

She wanted to ask more but decided to let it go. It didn’t matter; she would see for herself soon enough. There was going to be no way to avoid seeing Rafsky, and if they were ever going to bridge the chasm between them she was going to have to be the one to reach out.

When Louis led her to the porch of the Potawatomi she gave him a wry smile. “The Grand Hotel looks a lot bigger in the photographs,” she said.

“It’s closed,” Louis said. “This is the only place open on the island. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. I told you, my coming here is better than your coming to Echo Bay. At least here my officers won’t bother me.”

At the front desk she trailed behind holding the flowers as Louis talked to the clerk. The small lobby had fake wood paneling, a brick fireplace, and royal blue carpeting, with well-worn plaid furniture. But it was spanking clean and reminded her a little of her family’s old house on Rumson Road back in Cleveland Heights.

“Here you go,” Louis said, coming over to her.

She hesitated, then took the key he was holding. From the moment she saw him standing on the dock she had felt the stir of longing. She was sure he felt the same, but she was glad he had made no assumptions.

Upstairs Joe unlocked the door to room seven and turned to take her bag from Louis.

“Where is your room?” she asked.

“Right across the hall.” He glanced over her shoulder. “You have a kitchenette.”

“You don’t?”

“I have a Mr. Coffee, but it doesn’t work.”

She smiled. “You can come over to my place for breakfast.”

He returned the smile. She had forgotten how much she liked seeing him smile. His smiles had come easily when she first met him two years ago, when they were both still in Florida. But then she took the sheriff’s job in Michigan, and things started to change. It wasn’t just the strain of their long-distance relationship. Something inside of him began to change, like a strange moroseness had taken hold of him. He wouldn’t talk about it when she asked. When he called her from Palm Beach last Christmas there was a bitterness in his voice. She knew it was because he hated working as a PI, but it was more than that. He was adrift. And worse, he didn’t seem to care. She told him they needed a break from each other.

Six weeks ago he called. He said he was coming to Michigan to visit Lily and wanted to know if he could come up to Echo Bay. No pressure, he said. I just want to see you again.

The awkward silence was there again, filling the small space between them in the narrow hallway.

“It’s going on five. You want to get something to eat?” Louis asked.

She nodded. “And a glass of wine.”

“Okay, let me just change my shirt.”

She tossed her bag on the bed, set the flowers down, and took off her leather jacket. At the mirror she blew out a breath. Her lipstick was gone, and her hair was a wild mess. She thought about fishing her brush out of her bag but with a dismissive wave at her reflection she turned away.

Louis’s door was open. She went across the hall and stood in his doorway, arms crossed, watching him. It had been four months since she had been with a man. Stephen was a doctor in Petoskey, and the sex had been good and the companionship just what she needed. The affair with Stephen had lasted three months, and there had been no one since.

Louis was standing at the sink, his back to her. His shirt was off, and his back rippled as he reached for the towel.

“You’ve been working out,” she said.

He turned. Again, there was that smile.

“For me?” she asked.

“For Lance Mobley.”

She stared at him.

“I’ve put in for a job with Lee County.”

She came further into the room. “You’re going back in uniform?”

Louis nodded. “Mobley’s in trouble with the EEOC. I just have to go through certification, and I’m in.”

“Detective?” she asked.

“Probably not.”

“You’re okay starting at the bottom again?”

He nodded. “You’re the one who told me I had to want something for myself. I want my badge back.”

From the moment she saw him on the dock she had sensed that something had come alive in him again. Part of it was probably Lily. Some of it was undoubtedly this case here on the island. But she felt certain most of it was because he was going to be a cop again.